Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to an automobile occupant protection device.
Related Art
Japanese Patent No. 5637192 describes an example of a vehicle curtain airbag device. Described briefly, this vehicle curtain airbag device includes a main chamber that protects the head of a seated occupant in a side-on collision, a delay chamber that is disposed at a vehicle front side of the main chamber and that inflates and deploys later than the main chamber, and a sub chamber that is disposed at a vehicle width direction inner side of the main chamber and that inflates and deploys so as to block off a gap formed between a driver's seat airbag and the main chamber. In the above configuration, in the event of a small overlap collision, both the vehicle curtain airbag device and a driver's seat airbag device actuate, and in the event of a rollover, only the vehicle curtain airbag device actuates. The head of the seated occupant is thereby protected whether in the event of a small overlap collision or in the event of a rollover.
Note that in the related art described above, to attempt to enhance protection performance for the head of the seated occupant in the event of a collision at an angle, and in particular in the event of an oblique collision, it would be necessary to increase the size of the driver's seat airbag and to increase the size of a front end chamber disposed at the vehicle front side of the curtain airbag. However, adopting such a countermeasure would give rise to the possibility of the driver's seat airbag and the curtain airbag interfering with each other during inflation and deployment, and so inflation and deployment states of both the driver's seat airbag and the curtain airbag may be unstable.
In consideration of the above circumstances, an object of the present disclosure is to obtain an automobile occupant protection device capable of improving protection performance for the head of a seated occupant by stabilizing inflation and deployment states of both a driver's seat airbag and a curtain airbag in the event of a collision at an angle, and in particular in the event of an oblique collision.